Asylum and Refugee Office registers 163,218 applications for international protection in 2023, an all-time high since its creation

The Asylum and Refugee Office (OAR) of the Ministry of Home Affairs received 163,218 applications for international protection in 2023, 37 per cent more than in the previous year and the highest number since the office's creation in 1992, according to provisional data at 31 December. These figures place Spain as the third largest recipient of international protection in the European Union.

By nationality, the country of origin of the largest number of applicants was Venezuela, with 60,534 applications, 37 percent of the total, followed by Colombia (53,564) and Peru (14,306). The three countries account for 78.6 per cent of the total number of cases registered.

By place of submission, the Community of Madrid tops the list of autonomous communities with the highest number of applications (52,684), followed by Andalusia (25,948) and Catalonia (14,775). The Ministry of Home Affairs also resolved a total of 92,963 international protection cases in 2023, which represents an increase of 1.8 per cent over the previous year.

Granting international protection

In the past year, 7,521 refugee statuses have been granted, a record number to date and accounting for 26.5 per cent of the statuses granted by the OAR since 2012 (28,232). The top five nationalities of those granted status are Afghanistan, Syria, Nicaragua, Colombia and Honduras. Subsidiary protection has also been processed for 3,850 people, mainly from Mali. A total of 41,478 citizens, mostly Venezuelans, have been granted residence and work permits on humanitarian grounds for one year.

According to these figures, the rate of recognition of refugee and subsidiary protection status is 12.23 per cent and the rate of international protection is 56.85 per cent.

Processing of statelessness petitions

In 2023, 953 applications for recognition of statelessness were submitted and 1,022 cases were resolved. Statelessness is a procedure aimed at identifying among applicants persons who are not considered as nationals by any State, according to its legislation, and who claim to be without nationality, as provided for in the Convention relating to the Status of Stateless Persons, concluded in New York on 28 September 1954.

More than 33,900 temporary protections

The OAR granted temporary protection status to 33,928 people in 2023, bringing the number of citizens displaced by Russia's invasion of Ukraine to almost 195,000, who are covered by this scheme in Spain.

The Government of Spain launched this emergency procedure in March 2022 and delivered the first concession resolution on the 11th of that month, in compliance with the EU agreement authorising, for the first time, the application of the Temporary Protection Directive.

Non official translation